Popular customization of vehicles in some cases involves the application of an adhesive film carrying printed graphics to the exterior surface of the vehicle. Such a film is readily available for example from 3M and is provided in large sheets carrying a pressure sensitive adhesive covered by a release layer allowing the sheet to be printed with the required graphics and applied to the vehicle.
Such films can be pre-printed with a pattern, may be single color for cutting into shapes for generating patterns on the vehicle and/or may be textured with varying thicknesses which provide various visual effects. Many different possibilities for the type of film are available and new films become available regularly.
One issue which remains a difficulty is that of cutting the film at required locations so that the film terminates at the edge of a panel or at any other required location on the vehicle.
The above patents show methods of cutting the film applied over a tape attached to the surface to be covered, with the tape carrying a filament which is pulled from the tape to effect a cutting action through the film.
Films have been and are being introduced which cause a significant increase in the difficulty of cutting the film with a clean effective cut. These films provide a softer more pliable vinyl for easier attachment and provide additional textured effects so that the film is inherently more difficult to cut. Such films are typically formed by casting the vinyl material and previous methods of calendaring the vinyl to a constant thickness are typically being replaced. The intention in this industry is to provide more and more enhanced effects by taking the material itself and the patterns into which it is shaped to more extreme processes.
In addition pressure sensitive adhesive films of this type are also widely used as masking material for use in defining or delineating an area to be coated with a colored coating where the method and tape described herein is used for cutting the masking material which is then removed after the coating is applied in the non-masked area.